Not to Play Favorites, But..

People ask us a lot whether we notice any differences in Leah and Riley's personalities.

And the answer, I can safely say, is -- um, heck yeah.

Leah is a very dominant personality. She's very energetic, happy (most of the time), and extremely curious and eager to do new things. She's already smiling all the time, cooing, making faces in reaction to her mommy and daddy's faces, playing with her rattle, rolling over repeatedly.

Riley, on the other hand, is pretty darn reserved. She's stingy with her smiles and will only flash one for you if you really earn it. Most of the time she has one of three looks on her face: (a) pensive introspection, or (b) vague uneasiness/fear, or (c) inconsolable terror. Ah yes, there are the night-time freakouts, where for an hour she goes absolutely bonkers, shrieking in terror as if she thinks her mommy's trying to smother her to death with her breast.

I guess you could say that Leah's a bit more fun than Riley right now.

I actually thought about this situation a lot when Kathy was pregnant. I worried about whether the fact that one daughter might be more advanced or more fun might make me somehow favor that daughter ever so slightly over the other. And the "neglected" daughter might somehow develop a complex about not being "good enough" for daddy.

Now that I'm a real parent and am faced with the actual situation I had envisioned, I find that what's happening is almost the opposite of what I had feared. This situation is starting to bring out my tendency to root for the underdog, and that if anything, I find myself subconsciously favoring Riley. It's as if my subconscious mind realizes that Riley might need me more than Leah does right now, and that I might need to give her that extra bit of support to help her be as outwardly happy as her sister.

Or maybe I just favor her because I think pensive introspection is cool. Or maybe it's the fact she has more hair. Or the fact that her daddy got to pick her name.

Or the fact that she looks really cute sitting in her bathtub.


Although I gotta say, that Leah is pretty cute herself:


That's enough parental gloating for one night.